Administrators defend proposed student fee increases at town hall

Fees paid by NC State students may increase by about $25 for the 2020-2021 school year, if proposed changes discussed at a town hall Monday, Sept. 23 are accepted.

According to the Student Government website, once finalized, the changes will go to Chancellor Randy Woodson by 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 11. After any alterations, the recommendations will be sent to the Board of Trustees to consider at their Nov. 21 meeting and later to the UNC Board of Governors for consideration in early 2020.

Altogether, the changes propose an increase of $25.35 per year. This would bring undergraduate fees for full-time students up from $2565.60 to $2590.95, approximately a 1% increase. Similarly, graduate fees would increase from $2577.60 to $2602.95.

Barry Olson, associate vice chancellor of the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, led a presentation outlining the changes at a high level. Proposed changes are as follows:

• Increase of $11.00 - Transit Operations
• Increase of $8.00 - Student Center operations
• Increase of $7.65 - Student Center programming
• Increase of $1.00 - Student Legal Services
• Decrease of $1.30 - Student Government
• Decrease of $1.00 - Student Publications/Media*

According to a fee request form, Student Media projects a decreased need for student fee money; this is due to increased revenue from other sources. The $1.30 decrease in the Student Government fee is attributed to Wolfpack Pick Up, according to a fee request form. The service is being transferred to the Student Center programming section, which accounts for $1.30 of the increase in that section.

The rest of the increases are due to increasing operation costs in various departments.

The university’s budget totals over $1.6 billion, and according to Olsen, student fees make up about $30 million of revenue.

“Tuition and fees make up roughly 21% of that total amount of revenue coming in,” Olson said. “That’s a large portion. However, if you notice that our state appropriations sit at about 32%, that’s really good to know. That means the state is investing and caring about higher education. I will tell you that over time, that number has dropped.”

Transit Operations

Mike Kennon, assistant director for planning & operations at NCSU Transportation, discussed increasing costs associated with the Wolfline bus system and suggested an $11 increase in student fees to offset this change.

In the past few years, costs have gone up for Transportation. These expenses include raising money to tear down part of Coliseum Deck, and the addition of five new Wolfline buses to NC State’s fleet over the summer.

Kennon said students have expressed interest in improving Wolfline services as a reason for expansion.

“We have heard from students loud and clear Wolfline needs better service,” Kennon said. “You need better connections between main campus and Centennial Campus, and we’ve got a number of initiatives that were rolled out.”

Holt Craven, assistant director for finance at NCSU Transportation, said at the town hall increasing student fees was the most appropriate way to offset rising costs.

“In transportation, we only have two main sources of revenue: parking permit revenue and the student transit fee revenue,” Craven said. “If the student transit fee revenue continued to not be increased, we only have two options to make things work, and that’s either cut Wolfline service down to save costs or raise parking permit prices to offset the subsidy.”

Craven said he felt cutting services would be detrimental and raising parking permit prices to pay for Wolfline buses would be inappropriate.

“When we raise parking permit prices, we want to raise those prices so it reflects the parking program,” Craven said. “It’s not exactly fair to raise parking permit prices to fund the Wolfline.”

Student Center Operations

Student centers have seen increased costs recently, according to Tim Hogan, operations director for University Student Centers.

According to a fee request form, staff salaries have seen annual increases of over $240,000, and demand for supplies and materials has increased to approximately $256,000. Additional expenses, including event reservations and increases in services, bring the total cost increase to well over $750,000, which would be roughly covered by a $28 increase in student fees.

Without the increase in student fees, Student Centers’ reserve funds would deplete below university recommended levels, so a gradual increase of $8 has been proposed for the 2020-2021 year, followed by additional increases in following years.

Hogan said NC State has a relatively low student center fee, compared to other universities in the UNC System, at just over $100. For comparison, UNC-Wilmington’s fee is $138, UNC-Chapel Hill’s is $159.60, and App State’s is $228.

“Our fee we charge is the lowest by far among the system,” Hogan said. “We believe we provide excellent value to you as students and the student experience with what we’re able to provide.”

While student fees may see an increase, Hogan said other opportunities to generate revenue are used whenever possible. For instance, student organizations may rent space in Talley Student Union for free, but non-student groups do get charged.

“Not every student organization uses space, but if they do, they’re not going to be charged additionally for it,” Hogan said. “Departments that use space and host complicated events, we want them to pay a larger share. If we do sell space to non-university groups, we want them to pay the highest amount. Any chance that we can get to generate non-student fee revenues, we like to take advantage of that.”

Ultimately, without the fee increases, Hogan said service costs may increase and space may become less available.

Student Center Programming - Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity

Adrienne Davis, interim director for campus community centers at the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, spoke about an increased demand seen at several community centers and proposed a fee increase of $6.35.

“We are looking at a $6.35 fee increase, which largely is being focused on our ability to have human capital,” Davis said. “If you’ve engaged with the centers, you know that the biggest benefit of all of our centers is the people that are in those places.”

This fee increase would fund three new positions, including an additional staff member in the Women’s Center that specializes in interpersonal violence, according to Davis.

“We’ve seen almost a 200% increase in survivors coming in to the center looking for advocacy and support,” Davis said. “We got some numbers from our leadership team in the Women’s Center saying that they’re averaging one to two walk-ins a day for survivors. We want to continue to keep providing survivors on campus with all the support they need.”

The approximately 200% in increased need for advocacy and support compared the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 school years, Janine Kossen, associate director for Interpersonal Violence Services at the Women’s Center, clarified after the event.

Davis said the remaining funding would go to an additional assistant director for Multicultural Student Affairs to address changing demographics, as well as allowing for a graduate assistant at the GLBT center.

“We’ve just seen a boom in student programming participation,” Davis said. “We want to be sure we’re meeting the needs of our students as we continue to grow.”

Student Legal Services

Student Legal Services is a general practice law firm on NC State’s campus. Pam Gerace, staff attorney and director of Student Legal Services, spoke about a proposed $1 fee increase.

According to a fee request form, Student Legal Services has seen growth in cases heard per year. Additionally, compensation and benefits for employees have seen increases.

“We actually now have four attorneys,” Gerace said. “The biggest fee increase I think was in 2014-2015 to pay for our fourth attorney. We must have known what was going to be happening now, because we hired an immigration attorney back in 2015, which has come in very handy.”

Gerace said Student Legal Services handles close to 3,000 cases per year; of those, about 15% deal with advice in criminal cases, and recently with the hiring of an immigration attorney, up to 17% of cases deal with immigration-related issues.

We don’t come often for an increase, as you can tell; the last one was $0.50 in 2016-2017,” Gerace said. “Our fee goes to our services. I have some very high-quality people that work for very little, and so we need to keep up.”

*Editor’s note: Technician is a part of Student Media, and receives a portion of the Student Publications/Media fee money.